“Where? How?” she asked.

“There’s a little group in a café near here that I join every now and then. People talk. Often in English. I drop by and listen and do some give and take. It helps to keep an ear to the ground.”

He glanced at his watch. Alex glanced at hers at the same time. It was 10:45.

“And they don’t know who they’re talking to?” Alex asked.

“They don’t know and they don’t care,” Voltaire said. “My cover is this: I’m a Monsieur Maurice Lamara, an importer of air-conditioning units from France and Italy. I run a midsized company here. I have a dozen employees and I treat them well. I never go near the embassy, and I collect a nice payment every month from the Americans who put an electronic transfer into a bank in Europe for me every month. Cairenes voice a lot of noisy opinions, but they know better than to ask many questions because they might get a visit from the police. You’ll see what I mean.”

“Who will you say I am?”

“My femme du jour,” he said with a trace of lechery in his eyes. “They’re used to seeing me with beautiful Western women, one after another. I bring women by, just to show them off. They rather admire me for it in their swinish Arab way. If you’re game, I’ll take you there.”

“I’m your squeeze of the night, huh?”

“So to speak.”

“I didn’t travel four thousand miles to go home early,” she said.

“That’s the spirit.”

“Am I dressed okay? For wherever we’re going.”

“You’re fine. Keep the headscarf. We’ll have some high-artillery backup, anyway. I don’t go anywhere without it.”

“I noticed. You have at least six.”

“There are more than that, but I’m not giving away numbers.”

“Eight then? The two Persian women have guns?”

“Now you have it.”

“I never for a moment thought you were stupid,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Voltaire turned and gestured to a burley man seated two tables away. The man stood. As his body straightened up to standing position, Alex realized he was even larger than she had guessed. He stood maybe six-four. He wore a white robe and an Islamic skull cap. He came to the table and a grin spread across his face. He had the torso of a Kodiak bear and the face of a cherub with a stubbly beard.

“This is Abdul,” Voltaire said. “Abdul and I have known each other for twenty years. He’s one of my bodyguards and he’ll lead the way.”

Abdul held out a hand to Alex.

“Charmed,” he said.

“My pleasure, I’m sure,” Alex said. Abdul’s hand was like a catcher’s mitt.

Abdul nodded.

“Where are you from in America?” he asked.

“I’m from the Toronto area,” she said. “I’m Canadian. What about you? You’re a native of Cairo?”

“I’m Iraqi,” Abdul said. “I grew up in Detroit. I was in the US Army for six years. Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Benning, Georgia, stateside, one tour in Afghanistan.”

“Surprising place, isn’t it?” Voltaire asked. “I assume you have a weapon. Check that it’s functioning in case there’s trouble.”

“Expecting any?”

“I never expect any. And I always prepare for it.”

“My weapon is fine,” she said. It was where it always was, on her right hip, accessible, the safety catch on.

“Then let’s go,” he said.

Abdul left the room for several seconds, then came back and gestured that they should follow. They took off. Alex stayed close to Voltaire. They were back in the alley but now headed in a different direction. It was close to 11:00 in the evening, and Voltaire led her into an alley between shops. It was so dark that she couldn’t see and so narrow that they had to pass one at a time.

“You’re a brave woman, coming here by yourself, Josephine,” Voltaire said softly and affably. “You’re well educated and attractive. There must be easier ways for you to make a living. Safer too. Why do you do it?”

“Sometimes I ask myself the same question,” Alex said.

He snorted a little in reaction. “We all do,” he said. “What is it? The adrenaline? The danger of hanging out with disreputable people? The feeling that we’re on the side of the angels? A sense of justice? Must be some reason why we kick through back alleys and put our lives on the line. My question is rhetorical, really. I don’t know the answer and I suspect you don’t, either.”

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know,” she said.

“I promise you I’ll do the same.”

They came to an even narrower passage between buildings. No more than two feet in width, jagged nails sticking out from bricks, plus some electrical wires. For a moment, Voltaire took her hand to steady her. “This is tricky here,” he said. He eased Alex through sideways for twenty feet until they emerged into a wider alley.

“Tu parles français, n’est-ce pas?” he asked.

“Je parle français, oui,” she answered.

For good measure, even though there was still noise from the city in the background, he suggested switching into French. Less chance of being overheard and understood. Alex concurred and agreed. While French was not uncommon in Egypt, it was nowhere nearly understood as much as a second language as English.

“I’ll give you thirty years of history in six minutes as we walk,” Voltaire said, still in low tones. “And my history lesson will tell you where we are today. Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Nasser in 1970, was assassinated by his own soldiers in 1981. Several of the soldiers who shot him had had family or close friends who had been displaced by one of his urban renewal projects. Sadat was liked and respected outside of Egypt, but here the poor and the Islamic militants hated him. It was a matter of time before his own people murdered him. And he misplayed his most basic politics at home. He quietly funded some Islamic radical groups, figuring they would combat the leftists who Sadat actually feared. His plan backfired. Some of those who conspired to kill him had been radicalized by the same groups that Sadat had founded. Other leaders of the assassins were people whom Sadat had himself freed from Nasser’s jails. They weren’t grateful, they were bitter. They hated the government no matter who was running it. They felt the government had betrayed Islam. It was their theory that if someone had betrayed Islam, it is the duty of the individual as a Muslim to right that wrong. So they righted the wrong by murdering the president of their country. Quite a place, huh? Egyptian politics as usual. That’s how it’s been for centuries. It will never change.”

The alley widened.

Abdul was about fifty feet up ahead, and Alex realized one reason he wore white. He was more visible that way. There were no overhead lights, just reflected lights from the windows of the back entrances of the stores and the houses that they passed.

“Were you in Egypt at the time?” Alex asked. “When Sadat was assassinated?”

“I was a young lad,” he said. “I was a student at the American University in Cairo. Beautiful place until it got trashed by the unwashed Islamic masses.”

They wound their way down several more alleys, each one more serpentine than the previous. Alex realized they were in a different district now. The omnipresent stench of backed-up plumbing was everywhere, as was the scent of stale cigarettes. In the better locations there was a mélange of cooking smells, mostly spices she didn’t recognize as well as onions and garlic frying.

“Hosni Mubarak was Sadat’s successor. Mubarak was on the reviewing stand when Sadat was assassinated,” Voltaire said. “While Sadat turned and glared at his assassins, Mubarak had the good sense to duck when the shooting started. His reward? He became president of the country. Then he did some other smart things too. A quarter of a century ago Cairo was a mess. A million cars. Pollution so thick you could chew on it. Sewage overflowed into the streets. Skyscrapers were overpopulated and poorly constructed. The blight spread practically all the way out to the Sphinx’s testicles, and, ironically, the desert was spreading right into Cairo. Sand covered the streets. Sand and garbage. And on top of the sand and garbage, more sand and garbage and the bodies of people who had died overnight, natural or otherwise. The whole place, the whole population, was festering. Work into that the fact that this was one of the most overpopulated cities in the world and you begin to get the picture.”